Lots of noise now about ensuring fair grading for GCSE/A levels in 2023

It wont happen. Unis are complaining about the level of achievement of the students not matching their grades and they want it back to separating out top performers so that offers are made according to ability commensurate to course requirements

@JellyBabiesSaveLives
"One long saga of competitive crappiness."

This. Since the start of COVID, it's the Olympics of who has had it worse. The competition is stiff and about to get more so when we find out how many strikes await the next school year or how many Y11s have no teacher.

The amount of kids getting pass grades is already decided. What will be decided later on is the grade boundaries, which I predict this year will be very very low. Looking at DD who is in Y10, next year will probably be even worse. This Y11 and Y10 seem so apathetic. I think their grade boundaries will be low regardless of government intervention. They seem to have given up enmasse.

https://www.mumsnet.com/talk/petitions_noticeboard/4846843-grant-2023-a-level-grading-allowances-in-england-similar-to-walesscotlandni

Have a look at this .

The strikes have had minimal impact on exam classes
You must be joking! Ds1 (yr13) was told to attend school on strike days but he didn't get any lessons as his teachers were on strike. Well, for 2 of his subjects. For the 3rd subject, he doesn't have a teacher at all. Got sick at the beginning of year 12 and school have been unable to hire a replacement.

He's competing for uni places with the kids who didn't get a place last year. The silver lining is that if he doesn't get a place, then next year, he'll be competing for a place with kids whose A levels are "back to normal" - expect for the ever-worsening teacher shortage of course.

One long saga of competitive crappiness.

However, some are saying that the current year 11 cohort haven’t missed gcse content. I think that’s missing the point. Each year’s content builds on previous learning so the current year 11 will have missed key concepts usually taught in year 8 and 9, which will affect their understanding.

Which suggests that they actually deserve lower grades than the 2019 cohort, and will therefore be benefitting from having their achievement pegged to that year group.

I think the grade boundaries are going to be very low. Aside from all the disruption due to covid and the lack of teachers, Y11 attendance rate this year is shocking.

I think this cohort was hit pretty badly tbh as y8 and y9 were fairly low priority years for the high schools during lockdown. My dd had virtually no teaching for all of y8 lockdown and nothing was properly marked. Y9 was a bit better but focus was very much on yrs 7 and the exam syllabus years. In maths it’s often the easy questions she gets wrong and some of her spelling is poorer than I’d like. Her teachers say this is common in this cohort.

@TeenDivided yes, agree with pretty much everything you say. I also suspect the grade boundaries will be slightly lower. The only issue I have is when people (and I’m not saying you were) say that this cohort should be fine as they haven’t missed gcse content. Every cohort has been affected, which was why Sir Kevan Collins quoted 15 billion as the figure required to support children getting back on track.

Purple I agree, BUT that is why grade boundaries may turn out to be lower this year.

It doesn't make any sense to say 'this year's cohort are doing worse, therefore we will give more of them higher grades'. The only reason last year's were higher is because the assessed by a different method cohorts of 20 & 21 ended up with too high grades, and the drop back was thought to be too big to do all in one go.

So this year they give the same proportion of 7s, 6s, 4s, whatever as 2019 but to achieve that the boundaries may be lower than in 2019.

Mixed feelings about this.

On one hand, we have to go back to the norm at some point.

However, some are saying that the current year 11 cohort haven’t missed gcse content. I think that’s missing the point. Each year’s content builds on previous learning so the current year 11 will have missed key concepts usually taught in year 8 and 9, which will affect their understanding. I teach in primary and you can still see gaps. It will be the same in secondary.

That’s without even discussing the huge impact on mental health. There are a couple of children in my son’s cohort who have not made it back into school after Covid. They are the extreme cases but the impact on those in school will still be there.

Whichever year your child missed due to lockdown, it will have affected their learning. It’s impossible to compare, even if you have two children in two different year groups, as their experience will not be representative of other students.

That was us too. It was utter chaos for months.

I think we can only hope that the universities can take this into account when considering near misses.

Last year showed that in some cases advanced information could be more confusing than helpful. In one case it was positively wrong, but in some other cases people misinterpreted it and didn't revise things they needed to.

My DD is doing GCSEs this year (starting Monday Yikes) and she and I are just glad that they'll be back to normal. I think it's better preparation for A levels. Whilst the 2021/2022 cohorts may have benefitted from more generous grades, I'm not convinced that it prepared them for their much harder A-levels and presumably some are doing A levels that they wouldn't have had the grades for in previous years.

There seems to be a misunderstanding here of what it means to return to 2019.

It’s the grade distribution that is returning to 2019 levels not the grade boundaries.

I expect grade boundaries in my subject to be significantly lower this year than 2019. The number of A* grades this year will be pretty much the same as 2019. I expect national performance in the exams (in terms of marks achieved) to be a fair bit lower. That means grade boundaries will be lower. Same at GCSE.

What has been proposed is already fair. It would be perverse to keep grades higher than 2019 for cohorts that are performing significantly worse doesn’t make sense.

Oh and let's not forget that in Y11 for 2022 cohort, people were still excluded for covid! Teachers off, people isolating. Disruption central. One of my ds teachers was hospitalised when he was in Y11.

Hmm don't think that the 2022 cohort had it easy. My ds was in it and it was horrible.

Sept 2022: Don't know if GCSEs happening
Nov 2022: Start doing exams for teacher assessed grades (big stress)
Continued with these fucking exams, including January "mocks" which might have been mocks and might have been real and counting towards teacher assessed grades. Note that for those January mocks, info was learnt not knowing if was in the real GCSE or whether that real one would happen.
Feb 2022: Advance information released. Fuck fuck - in my ds case, a term of work he'd done in one subject was excluded and a term his school hadn't done was included. Chaos.
Try to match up advance info to all the fucking boards.
Plough forward anyway into hell fire.

I don't know how this is actually expected to help, other than make people think in the future that they didn't deserve the grades which is not fair.

It's not that the exam boards have a level of difficulty that means a level 6 or whatever. They do it by percentages. So the top whatever percent will get a 9, then the next an 8. So if the paper is harder, or the cohort less prepared then the grade boundary goes down.

Obviously those who have had less disruption will do better-but that will still be true if you increase the percentage. They won't say "oh that person missed 3 strike days so we'll pop them up a grade as opposed to that person who only missed one".

I have a dc doing GCSEs this year.

Given the boundaries are adjusted for paper difficulty then returning to a similar percentage as 2019 is a good thing. Honestly, inflated grades does not help the students. Loads doing alevels they aren’t suitable for, which is upsetting for everyone.

I have a child in year 11. The cohort have been massively impacted, behaviour and attendance data shows it. The number of students with mental health issues is shocking and there seem to be more families in crisis.

i have seen my child study, he has had to go back to the syllabus and text books to patch large areas that haven’t been covered properly. All subjects build on prior years study GCSE’s aren’t just a two year vacuum (plus there are a significant number of schools that do a three year ks4)

The pandemic and the school closures aren’t just over with no impact, it is going to be with the school system for years - coupled with a lack of investment to support the education system cope

I find it really odd that i can look up the grades for 2019 and go 'about 4% will get a 9 in maths this year' but this years 4% could be much better or much worse than 2019 top 4%

Do A level teachers find that some years their top grade cohorts dont seem as good as the previous years cohort.

My Y11 son is in the middle school system, so missed most of his final year (Y8) of middle school due to the first Covid lockdown. High school didn’t get proper information about his cohort as a result. During his Y9 and Y10, his school had to repeatedly close year groups due to staff absence so he missed several days due to that as well. He has been hugely affected. I don’t know how you redress that, but it is certainly not business as usual for this year group.

Another on the fence but my DC currently in Year 11 has had so much disruption, not as much as my current Year 12 though granted.

However it's been endless teacher changes and illnesses, behind on teaching the curriculum in some subjects because of this, not necessarily covid-related but it's been a shit show. My Year 12 is on the third form tutor this year so far!

I’m on the fence about grade boundaries being pegged to 2022 but can see the rationale for it.I suspect a lot of that cohort are struggling with a levels.
I’ve had to recently explain to ds that it is not normal to get the exam topics given to you in advance! Out of his friendship group most are not doing anywhere near as well at a level as their gcse results would suggest they should. His college tutor agreed. They haven’t had the grounding in work ethic from gcse. I wouldn’t be shocked if grades are lower this year.

interestingly ds 19 who was 2020 gcse cohort is actually thriving in f.e. despite yr 11/12 disruption. I think it’s the work ethic and independent learning that was instilled into them for gcse prep that’s helping.